Protestant and Catholic officials returned to Northern Ireland’s Cabinet table yesterday and warned Protestant hard-liners who boycotted the meeting not to wage a political “guerrilla war.”

The four-hour round-table session at Stormont in east Belfast was the first government session since Britain returned self-rule to the troubled province on Tuesday.

Ten of the 12 ministers in the coalition attended – four each from the Protestants’ Ulster Unionist Party and the Catholics’ Social Democratic and Labor Party, and two from the IRA-allied Sinn Fein.

But the two Protestant ministers from the Democratic Unionist Party boycotted the meeting because of Sinn Fein’s presence.

The Democratic Unionists are threatening to destabilize the government by having party activists hold, then resign from, the two ministries allotted the party.

The province’s senior Protestant and Catholic officials – David Trimble, of the Ulster Unionists and Seamus Mallon of the SDLP – chaired yesterday’s meeting, and later criticized the Democratic Unionists for trying to sabotage the power-sharing arrangement.

“It appears that they’re going to try to wage a guerrilla war within the system,” Trimble told reporters.